Show the old settler my mv dear san in 1896 my father returned from delivering a herd of steers in colorado and hr P was enthusiastic about the wonderful country he had s seen e e n b between e monticello and cortez co r t e z he H e spoke of the wide stretches of beautiful land where big brush and weeds proved its fertility we knew little then about dry farming but he had taken account of long draws where he though water could be stored for in those years it really rained once in a great while and a reservoir had a chance to be filled of one thing we were very sure we could acco accomplish m more with a farm in the piute diute country than on the san juan river at bluff where we had been ean fighting with the sand and the capri capricious our mind was made up to go we cherished enthusiastic hopes but something intervened our attention was called to white mesa nearer at home my father died before he got ready to build here but I 1 have been here since that time still my enthusiasm for that e country took me over it with the he first opportunity and it was all I 1 had pictured it to bea wonderful wilderness calling for the sturdy kind men and women in e n who understand and love it and are not afraid of its stern bul bu loving demands and that kind of men and women came in answer to its call they built homes and highways and developed valuable forms arms they have even got fruit trees to grow without irrigation and they are beginning to crown the wonderful country with the ornamentation it deserves people who never saw it af a a solitude can not appreciate the transformation it has gone through in the last sixty years that magnificent stretch of f sagebrush prairie does not e end nd at monticello it extends on to the southeast a long way beyond the reef of the comb 1 it carries on a again ain at much the same altitude altitude the same kind of soil a wide region of sagebrush cedars and pine it too i is calling for the courageous kind of men and women who want to build homes of their own to have and be sustained by a farm to extend their roots into the soil of good old earth and establish themselves in an empire rf 0 individual independence the man who make his living from the soil around him is the most independent man in the world take the road ve westward stward from blanding and stop at the summit between the bears ears to the distant south southeast and southwest stretches a great region as big as rhode island it is intersected by rocks and gulches of course but it has miles and miles of prairie land aher people once lived from its soil and where people will sometime live again take the road south from blanding to shirttail shirt tail corner and thence west across the comb and up into the region of sagebrush and cedars where roads can be followed to many of its remote corners it may not be in my day for I 1 am living on borrowed time but surely in this progressive age when some people are terrified at the increasing birthrate in the united states that region south of elk mountain will be filled with homes farms highways fruit trees gardens school houses and communities of aggressive men and women albert R lyman |